I bought a Panasonic DMC-TZ5 today from a shop in Tottenham Court Road. 10x zoom and wide angle was irresistable, therefore I preferred those tangible features to slightly better pic quality performance of some other brands (like Canon) which is more difficult to observe by amateurs like me.

Well, everything was OK; zoom was perfect, it was fun to zoom into skin pores on friends' noses Though, pics were a lil bit noisy as expected.

But the real problem was the noise in mic itself, unfortunately. The video capture of the camera is very nice, it is a privilige to have HD videos with such a small camera, but the playback is dissapointing as mic records too much noise. This is not due to mic sensitivity, because it does not record the voice of people around that perfect. I tried the VGA mode, nothing changed of course. There is no special mic adjustment. So there is no way to get rid of that grain like sound. The problem is not easily understood during playback by the camera itself, as its small speaker hides the grainy noise in a crowded store; but playback in a laptop at home shows how awful the sound recording is with that parasite like sound.

I preferred to change the camera because I hate carrying a camcorder with me but I also like to shoot movies when I travel. I have a Canon Ixus 960 now, which has pretty nice mic recording (better than my previous Sony W40) and HD video capture (at 15 fps though, but with better compression than TZ5).

To be fair, a digicam is a digicam and most of you would be very happy with the wonderful zoom tool on TZ5 and its satisfactory wide angle photos. I was very unhappy when returning it back for that mic problem. Because it is a good "photo" camera indeed.

TZ5A arrived here yesterday, two days after phone order from Vanns in Montana.

Yes, the sound is grainy, noisy, and the mic faces upwards--the wrong direction.
For a trial I will probably try making an 'ear' for it of....silicone putty.

Overall I'm tickled with the TZ5. OK, It's not the best at anything but it is a competent-enough jack of all trades and much easier to use than the Casio Exilim it replaces here. Too bad that the TZ5 audio is of even lower quality than the Casio.